Hot sauce

I've been travelling to Pittsburgh for work each week.  There aren't any kosher restaurants near our hotel or our client site, so I have kosher packaged meals delivered to the hotel at the start of each week by a local kosher caterer.  The hotel main kitchen keeps them in a fridge for me, so I simply go pick it up each night when I want dinner.  Not too complicated, and relatively convenient.

However, the food itself is...not so interesting or diverse (to say the least.)  It's not bad, though. It's just....not unbad.  Mainly, the caterer just doesn't have a very creative culinary mind, and so I usually end up with basic grilled chicken for dinner and veggie wraps for lunch.....every day, every week.  (In the caterer's defense, though, he makes an awesome chocolate brownie, which I also have every day, every week.)

Anyway, I've tried to ask for different types of food from the caterer in order to improve my meal experience.  But this has generally failed.  So, instead, I've settled for another method of improving each meal....

Hot sauce

I put hot sauce on almost every meal that I get from this caterer.  Frank's Red Hot, Tobasco, Louisiana... You name it.  I've had it.

Anyway, a few nights ago, I go to pickup my packaged meal from the hotel's main kitchen.  The chef hands me the package, and I ask him if I can have some hot sauce.  There are few bottles of Tobasco right on the counter, so I'm expecting him to hand me one of those.  But instead he pulls out a little plastic container and pours a bunch of hot sauce into the container.  More accurately, he fills the container to the brim with hot sauce...with no lid of any sort.


So now I'm holding my kosher meal package, and an open container of red hot sauce filled to the brim.  And I'm wearing my backpack and pulling my suitcase behind me.  It's a juggling act.  A delicious spicy juggling act.  I'm thinking this will probably end badly.

I start walking to the elevator to head up to my room.  If I had thought things through, I would've spilled out some of the hot sauce in the trash can before trekking up to the room to eat, but I didn't think of this until too late.  (However, the thought of sipping some of the hot sauce from the container did cross my mind.  I didn't end up doing that, and I still haven't decided if that would've been wise or not.)

Despite having my hands full of kosher food and hot sauce and suitcase, I somehow push the elevator button to go up to my room.

Ding!


I walk in...and of course, there is a guy already in the elevator.  I shuffle into the elevator, careful not to spill the hot sauce.  (It would've been funny if I had tripped and thrown hot sauce on him, right?  Yeah, that would've been hilarious.  Sighhhh.  Good times.)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure he gave me and my balancing act a funny look, and I just wanted the elevator ride to be short and quick so I don't have to embarrass myself further. (Because we all know how ashamed I am of these ridiculous situations.)

Well, of course, it gets even worse because I suddenly realize that the button for my floor is already pressed!  He was going to the same floor as me!!


So I stand there quietly with this guy as the elevator goes up and up.  I was considering trying to break the silence with a joke or something ("Excuse sir, do you have any Grey Poupon?"), but ultimately decided it would be best to prolong the awkwardness as long as possible.


Ding! Elevator arrives at my (our?) floor.  The guy gives a quick look at me to see if I'm getting off first, then realizes I'm not going anywhere all that quickly without spilling my precious hot sauce.  So he gets off and starts walking down the hall.  I do the same....and realize he's going the same direction as me.  I'm thinking he must have the room adjacent to mine (because that's just how these things work out for me.)


In the end, his room was not that close to mine, so he didn't see the miraculous way in which I opened my door without spilling anything.  (It was quite impressive, in my humble opinion.)


And that is that.  I sat down at the desk in the room, ate my dinner in peace, and savored the hot sauce that I worked so hard for.